We were inspired today to hear news about one very clever engineer who hacked his Amazon Kindle so that his sister, who has cerebral palsy, would be able to use it. The applications engineer calls his new invention the Frankenkindle and complete instructions on how to make the new gadget are on his blog, Breadboard Confessions, where he plans to chronicle different projects he undertakes in order to make his sister’s life a little easier. Check out video of the device after the jump.

The new gadget has everything except for a permanent mount — right now it is just resting on two screws and a piece of wood — complete with keys for up, down, left, right, center and home. The tiny keys of the Kindle are replaced with the larger keys from a children’s e-reader, making this device much easier for someone with cerebral palsy to navigate. In order for the new keyboard to talk to the Kindle, it’s been programmed with a very small USB microcontroller to do the translations.

This is the first project posted to the Breadboard Confessions blog but it looks like there will be more to come. If you are interested in figuring out how to hack into a Kindle in the same way, the blog hosts very detailed instructions on what to do.